Off to the zoo!

Watch our video footage
of giraffe butts, zebra butts,
hippo butts, tiger butts,
penguin butts …
a lot of butts, is what I'm saying.



That doesn't make it any less fascinating.
It's not every day you get to see WILD butts.

Eek! The Fix awaits! What will FIT?!

Welp, I did it!

I wrote before about how uncertain I was about Stitch Fix because of their limited sizing: 0-14. I am a 16/18, but Stitch Fix doesn't (yet) do plus sizes.

I had a coupon for a free styling fee, so I decided I would be out nothing if I gave it a go. I told my stylist 5 fall tops in XL, please, and then I crossed my fingers and waited.

I posted a little video review & unboxing here, but I will post a written and photographic review below for those of you who prefer not to hear me yammer. Or you can do a little of both.

At any rate, I NEED YOUR HELP! I have a scant three days to decide what to keep and what to send back, so let me know what you think!

Come along with us
on a trip to a wildlife refuge …

but watch out for trolls!

We continue to be delighted with the inspiration and wisdom our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants share, and we hope you'll join us for the next carnival in August 2015! (Check out September, August, July, June, April, March, February, January, and summaries of all our 2014 posts, 2013 posts, 2012 posts, and 2011 posts if you missed any.)

Your co-hosts are Dionna at Code Name: Mama and Lauren at Hobo Mama.

Here are the submission details for October 2015:

Theme: Confessions: No one’s perfect, but sometimes parents (perhaps especially mom bloggers — you know who you are!) can appear perfect to people on the outside. What is your parental confession (crunchy or otherwise)? Come clean in this month’s carnival. Submission deadline: October 6. Carnival posting: October 13.

Deadline: Tuesday, October 6. Fill out the webform (at the link or at the bottom) and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: CarNatPar {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.com

Carnival date: Tuesday, October 13. Before you post, we will send you an email with a little blurb in html to paste into your submission that will introduce the carnival. You will publish your post on October 13 and email us the link if you haven't done so already. Once everyone's posts are published on October 13 by noon Eastern time, we will send out a finalized list of all the participants' links to generate lots of link love for your site! We'll include full instructions in the email we send before the posting date.

Yo ho, me hearties! It be that felicitous season known as International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and our crew will sure be lifting a cup o' grog in celebration.


We've put up a video with piratey Mad Libs, including a treasure chest of villainous vocabulary and a wee lesson on the parts o' speech for the cabin boys & girls. It's worth its weight in doubloons.

Ahoy, it's there:


Teach yerself and yer maties to talk like a true swashbuckling buccaneer today!

I'd best get back to swabbing ye ol' poopdecks…

Only 8 hours left!

My ebook, The Natural Parent's Guide to Babywearing, is included in the current $10 Motherhood Bundle up at Buck Books.


True to its name, each book is just a buck — so you get 10 incredible ebooks on natural mothering for just $10. My book is normally just about that much on its own, and buying all 10 separately would cost $68, so this is a great opportunity to add to your parenting library for pennies. You get:

The school district here in Seattle has been on strike,
but that hasn't affected our back-to-homeschool plans.

For what it's worth,
I fully support the teachers' demands —
more recess, less testing, fair pay —
but we went "back" to school regardless.

Or, you know, just kept not schooling.
Unschooling.
Funschooling.

Case in point, I brought you our annual tradition
of taking the kidlets bowling.

This week I'm going to share the video of the experience
at our favorite local bowling alley:



That way, you can stand in awe
of our incredible bowling skill.

I think I got only one gutter ball on camera
(once it was heavily edited).

Find more videos of our daily life
homeschooling & having fun
at Pirate Family Fun & Learning.

Great news! My ebook, The Natural Parent's Guide to Babywearing, is included in the current $10 Motherhood Bundle up at Buck Books.


True to its name, each book is just a buck — so you get 10 incredible ebooks on natural mothering for just $10. My book is normally just about that much on its own, and buying all 10 separately would cost $68, so this is a great opportunity to add to your parenting library for pennies.

The sale is on for just 72 hours, so be sure to check it out now through my link: Motherhood Bundle sale.

In honor of my eighth blogiversary (how the time flies!), I'm giving away a box of delicious, lactation-boosting MilkBoosters cookies to one lucky reader.

I have an advertising partnership with MilkBoosters (formerly Making Mamas Milk), where Dori sends me 40 yummy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies every month. They always make me full to bursting with mama's milk, no joke! I want to share the wonderfulness with you, so I'll send along my September box to someone who wants it.

If you're a nursing mama and would like to enter to win, please leave a comment telling me how long you've been nursing!

Please include your email address with the comment so I can reach you! You can write it like this to foil spambots: hobomama {at} gmail {dot} com. You must have a U.S. shipping address, because I'm sending it USPS Priority Mail.

Welcome to the September 2015 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Kids Blogging

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have let their children take over writing and sharing.

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Young people today with their Tubes of You. Sam and I both have been surprised at how much pleasure Mikko and Alrik have found in online videos uploaded by amateurs-turned-professionals, on a variety of topics that we'd never have suspected were so popular on YouTube.

Mikko tends toward gaming videos, learning how best to play the Xbox games he adores. It's a form of research — one within reach of an 8-year-old still learning to read fluidly. He can watch walkthroughs and search for specific scenes he needs help on, and he knows his favorite YouTube personalities. He also gets quite a chuckle from game-related humor, such as musical parodies, and unboxing and reviews of toys he's considering saving up his allowance to buy, such as Transformers and Legos.

Alrik's preferences are more arcane. He watches adults act out scenes with children's toys (yes, we have to make sure the channel is appropriate first), he has crushes on personable young ladies who create funny desserts or test out as-seen-on-TV products, he follows along with families who share their daily lives, he views Japanese-language versions of Power Rangers shows, and he loves surprise-egg videos, which were not a thing I knew existed until he found them and decided they were the best ever. For the uninitiated (was I the only one behind the times?), they feature big plastic eggs with thematic toys inside, often blind bags, and usually some cool decoration over the front. Sam made Alrik a My Little Pony egg for his birthday covered in a Play-Doh design of Rainbow Dash, and Alrik was giddy. He'd entered a YouTube video!

It turns out that wasn't enough for him, though, nor for Mikko. Pretty soon, Mikko started telling us we, as a family, should start our own YouTube channel. He decided it was the way of the future, and we needed to get with the times. Alrik was so excited about the idea that he began requesting that we film him opening absolutely anything: a toothbrush, a shower cap, random packages that came in the mail. He quickly began imitating his heroes and chatting merrily to his "fans," showing an innate video personality that was fun to capture on camera.